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Hominy Cakes

Hominy cakes are a griddle‑cooked cornmeal dish made with hominy, flour, butter, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hominy Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the hominy, flour, melted butter, and milk.

  2. If the hominy is cold and stiff, rub it through a colander.

  3. Beat the eggs separately, then fold the egg whites into the mixture just before baking.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture on a griddle until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs, with whites folded in, add lift and bind the batter into a tender cake.
Flour
Provides starch that gives the cakes body and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Milk
Moistens the batter so the flour hydrates and the cakes stay soft inside.
Hominy
Forms the main body of the cakes and adds a mild corn flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air that expands in the heat and lifts the batter. Overmixing or folding them in too early deflates the foam, so the cakes turn dense. Fold gently and bake promptly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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